(Image Source: The Weather Channel)

BY ERICA COGHILL

Irene versus the Big Apple…
The city’s preparing for the showdown… but just how much of a fight is Irene really going to put up when she hits NYC on Sunday?

The first hurricane to hit the East Coast in 7 years,

“Based on the latest forecast, it will be a category 1 storm, let me remind you that this kind of forecast is very imprecise and we are talking about something that is a long time away in meteorological terms.”

But, a meteorologist tells NBCNewYork that Irene could actually be more like an upper category 1 or even category 2…and he doesn’t expect her to weaken.

“One of the things I looked at was the sea surface temperatures that were 3 to 6 degrees Fahrenheit above normal, normally the hurricanes, as they come through, they weaken a bit, this is not going to weaken because the sea surface temperatures are warmer and that’s exactly what fuels the hurricanes, is warm ocean temperatures, and also, we have a lot of fast movement of the storm so it’s not going to have a lot of time to weaken before it gets here.”

But Bloomberg reported a different prediction…

“It will weaken as it moves closer to New York City.”

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg will put the city that never sleeps to bed when he shuts down the subway and bus system from Saturday afternoon until Monday. With parts of Manhattan just a few feet above water, CNN says even if New York City is spared a direct hit, it will still have massive flooding.

“Consider this simulation, done by NOAA, showing what a category 2 hurricane could do to a tunnel linking Brooklyn and Manhattan, Donald Cresitello, with the Army Corps of Engineers mapped out some worst case scenarios, a category 1 hurricane, for example, could flood the subway station at the southern tip of Manhattan with three and a half feet of water, a category 2 storm, he says, could put JFK Airport under 5 feet of water.”49-1:15

Now that’s one of the worse case scenarios, and as far as being optimistic goes…CNBC has some less frightening news…

“The best case scenario is for the jet stream to kick this thing out to sea and we’re on the west side, which if there’s any such thing as a better side of a hurricane, because the winds are actually moving against the flow of traffic, so if you think about a baseball pitcher throwing a hundred miles per hour, but he’s in a car moving twenty miles per hour, which is the speed of this storm, it’s coming at you at 120, so we would still get a lot of wind, a lot of rain.)

But according to CBS news, it doesn’t matter the severity of the storm….there will still be serious damage.

“Every 75 years New York gets a major hurricane, it doesn’t take a major hurricane to do major damage.”